Archive for July, 2009

As a follow up to my seminar on ARC Linkage grants, I want to make a few comments about how to improve our research productivity via external grants.  I feel privileged to be working on the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts.  I use the word privileged because it provides me with the opportunity to learn about the practices and thinking of other researchers and how universities support their researchers.  I also felt privileged to be invited to chair a review panel at the University of Sydney and to see how other organisations structure and support research.  I think being a scholar is about seeing the world from other perspectives.  Being a ‘participant observer’ in such external forums allows you to compare and contrast what is happening in your organisation with the external world, so you can use this information critically for both self and organisational assessment and improvement.

What I have observed so far on the ARC is that they are focused on supporting excellence.  The ARC peer review system is all about ensuring that the very best proposals get up.  Not surprisingly, a large percentage of the grants are written by professors and associate professors, and included in their grants are fellows (usually senior lecturers and lecturers) that they are mentoring. But there are no free rides on such proposals. The grant applicants put in a lot of time, effort and scholarship in creating their projects, writing up their proposals, convincing their peers of the merit of their study, and then doing the research and publishing their results at the highest level.

The outcomes of their research are not only publications. They also have a wider impact on society.  For example, by linking up with major partners and influencing the thinking and work practices of organisations, changing the course of current policy, or influencing the thinking within a discipline. 

The projects that get funded are written by people who have excellent and innovative ideas (as a reader and reviewer you can spot this within seconds of reading the grant), are excellent and productive researchers (when you meet them in person you can see their enthusiasm and commitment to research), and have the evidence to convince others that they are strong scholars with a national and international reputation.  There is no doubt that they are putting in long and hard hours into research.

This brings me to the second point.  Often these researchers work in environments where research is highly valued and supported. Their organisation provides them with a workload that recognises their research and scholarship. They receive support in writing grant applications, preparing budgets, and facilitating partnerships, and have managers who celebrate their achievements.

An observation from the review I am involved with at the University of Sydney. In the faculty I am working with, there is recognition that professors and associate professors (congruent with the duty statements of such academic appointments) have a greater capacity and responsibility to undertake research and  demonstrate academic leadership. This is reflected in their workload formula through teaching hours. For example, the minimum and maximum teaching hour responsibility of professors is 2 to 4 hours a week, while the minimum and maximum teaching hour responsibility for an associate lecturer is 10 to 15 hours a week.  But the level of accountability for Professors to be research active at the highest level is well documented.  Of course, over the life course of a person’s career, we should see people moving from high teaching and curriculum leadership to high research and scholarship leadership.  In this continuum, a person can identify a point in their career where teaching was particularly prominent and a point in their career where research was particularly prominent.

It is my view that if UNE wants to be more successful we will need to recognise three points.

First, we need to recognise that our senior academic colleagues have a position statement that reflects their capacity and responsibility to be leading academic scholars in their field, and we need to create space for them to do this important work. Likewise, demonstrating leadership involves mentoring the upcoming generation of scholars both within their organisation as well as in their field. 

Second, high quality research and scholarship must be connected to promoting knowledge in their field and improving society. With this responsibility comes the necessity to locate ourselves within the larger context of the discipline, the profession, other researchers (both within our institution and, perhaps more importantly, outside our institution), and the broader community. 

Third, individuals cannot undertake this important work and responsibilty without the appropriate support and investment in infrastructure from their university.  It is this last point that I think UNE needs to consider very seriously.

I welcome your feedback on this topic, which you can provide by leaving a comment here.

In my last two contributions to The University of New England Voice I discussed some aspects of the Bradley Review of Higher Education.  I would like to continue this theme, as I am particularly interested in the concept of the ‘national university for regional areas’.  My interest is in relation to the role of the University of New England as Australia’s Rural University.

The Bradley Review has been hailed as a success in that the government has taken notice and has addressed it as part of the 2009 budget exercise.  Of the 46 recommendations the government has accepted 25, is implementing 10 in adapted form, has deferred six, left one to the universities and has rejected four.  Recommendation 17 is the one that applies to the ‘national university for regional areas’.  Although nominally accepted, the response is far from satisfactory and I quote.  ’The government has agreed to provide $2 million for a feasibility study into how Charles Sturt University and Southern Cross University might come together to provide enhanced services.’   As I argued in my previous Voice, this is hardly an appropriate response and as recent events have proved will not provide the solution to the problem.

In this regard I argue that Australia already has a national rural/regional university.  The University of New England is the only university in the sector, in a rural location, which offers a comprehensive range of degrees, including Bachelors of Arts and Sciences, via both on campus and distance mode.  This provides the rural and regional population across Australia with potential access to the full suite of offerings expected in a major city.  We approach the issue of equity of access via strategic partnerships, and consider that this is more effective than mergers of whole universities with no clear educational advantage.  The University of New England has a number of strategic partnerships with other universities that extend and enhance our student access provision.  These include Medicine and Geology with the University of Newcastle, Physics with Murdoch, Engineering Technology with Southern Queensland, and Languages (Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian) with Newcastle, James Cook, Southern Queensland and Sunshine Coast.  Moreover we are currently discussing a major joint research and teaching initiative in agriculture with the University of Sydney.  This alliance will cement our already strong position in agriculture to provide a formidable and dominant presence.  We argue that these strategic alliances provide greater opportunities than wholesale university mergers as they are specifically targeted toward complementarity of provision across the participating universities.  Our collaborations and articulations with TAFE in a number of areas further enhance access of low SES students to a university education. 

It should also be pointed out that there is an important difference between a metropolitan university with a regional or rural campus and the University of New England that is a single campus university in a rural area.  Regional and rural campuses of metropolitan universities may concentrate on their local communities, but nevertheless are a small part of a larger entity with a very different focus.  On a financial note, regional and rural campuses of metropolitan universities have the home campus to support them. The University of New England has no such base on which to draw.

In conclusion I support the concept of a hub and spoke model of tertiary education provision for rural and regional Australia on two levels.  As argued previously, Australia already has in the University of New England a national rural/regional university that provides a comprehensive suite of degrees via both on campus and distance mode.  With the University of New England as the hub, spokes link to other universities across the sector for provision of niche requirements.  In addition a small number of strategically located rural/regional universities or campuses of metropolitan universities could serve specific areas.  This proposal could be achieved by retention of a selected number of existing campuses, in some instances via mergers in over-serviced locations. It is curious to note that this comment of the Bradley Review has been conveniently forgotten.  On the other hand it is encouraging to note that Senator Kim Carr supports the hubs and spokes concept for Australian universities and has elaborated on the theme in recent speeches.

If we believe that this is indeed the model then we need to convey this to Canberra in the strongest terms.  It is now apparent that nothing will emerge from the government’s $2 million investment.  The University of New England should move in to provide the solution.

One of the biggest frustrations of this position is anticipating or waiting for government announcements that affect the Universities finances. The timing of these announcements is at the discretion of the Commonwealth Government and not to the official running of a university budget plan.

This was brought home to me during the 2009 University budget approval process. The day after the University Council approved the 2009 budget, the Government announced that UNE had been awarded $7.9 million as part of Infrastructure stimulus package. Welcome news for UNE, but unhelpful in planning for the longer term. At present UNE also has three applications for Capital Development Pool (CDP) grants, these grants are normally awarded in the first quarter of the year. UNE has in the past been quite successful with the CDP grants with Oorala, UNE Access Centres and the Dixon Library learning commons all being recipients. The 2008 CDP grants have still not been awarded and I remain hopeful that one of the three submissions will be successful.

The latest frustration with the funding is the proposal amendment to the Higher Education Support Act 2003 that will provide funding to student services amenities and advocacy. This initially was to be introduced for implementation for second semester 2009 but given workloads for the Federal parliament in the 2009 -2010 Budget and the proposed Carbon Trading Reduction Act this has now been delayed until first semester 2010 (I hope). This amendment will allow the University the option of charging a compulsory Student Services and Amenities Fee to support both undergraduate and postgraduate student associations, SportUNE, Services UNE and other student support services.

At present UNE financially support all types of student associations and services by providing funds from the central University budget. This support while providing a lifeline to student organisations in a post VSU environment has not been able to fully support all the student activities and services. The finalisation and approval of the new Post Graduate Student Guild and the Undergraduate Student association will see these organisations conduct elections for new representative boards to act as a voice for all UNE students. These student organisations will be to support student advocacy and services with a budget provided by this important piece of legislation. The introduction of a Student Services and Amenities Fee will allow SportUNE and Services UNE to ramp up and once again provide a full range of services for the students of UNE.

Enough on the frustration of this position, one of the pleasures is being able to allocate Capital funds to the number of exciting new courses at UNE. The courses in Pharmacy and Sport Exercise Science both hold bright proposals for additional student enrolments and UNE.

The Bachelor of Pharmacy has been especially designed for regional Australia where there is an acute shortage of community pharmacists. There is an expectation to have 60 enrolled students for 2010 rising to 216 enrolled students for 2013.

The three new courses offered around Sport Science will also attract 60 student enrolments for the first year and hopefully leading to a full cohort of 240 student enrolments by the fourth year.

Both of these new courses will be supported by the UNE Capital Plan to construct the infrastructure necessary in obtaining accreditation for these courses by their respective professional associations.

The other exciting project that is underway in the refurbishment of the Animal House. This project will support one of UNE key research and teaching priorities that will allow UNE to leverage more grant applications and research income.

One of the key priorities for the second half of this year is the 2010 -2012 budget. This will be influenced by Australian Government grants which are a key income item both for capital funds and general income. At present our government income stands at 56% of total operating budget. This is one of the highest levels in the Australian University sector and can leave UNE exposed to the vagaries of government policy and budgets decisions. It is hopeful that investments in new courses and infrastructure will allow more diversification of income sources such as additional research grants and the attraction of international students. It is hopeful by 2012 that UNE will be able to reduce this dependency of government grants down to something closer to 50% of income.

This is just one of the aims of the 2010 -2012 budget however I will leave further discussion for the future.

Colleagues, I want to talk a bit about eResearch this time around.  However, before I do, I want to pause and share my thoughts on an event I had the pleasure of participating in this week: the launch of Arts New England: The UNE Centre for Research and Innovation in the Arts.  This Centre will provide a focus for Arts research moving out of the shadows onto centre stage as a strength in UNE’s research profile.  I know a lot of hard work and energy was poured into bringing this Centre into fruition, from staff within in the School of Arts, under the leadership of Professor Jenny Shaw, and beyond.  It will give a coherence and collaborative thrust to Arts research and explicitly aims to enhance community engagement on a wide variety of fronts.  It promises to transform our understanding of the role of Arts research in the creation and sharing of meanings, interpretations and perspectives.  An excellent development for UNE and a wonderful launch - well done!

Now, what about eResearch?  One of the important aspects of our research agenda that has been occupying my mind in the past few weeks is eResearch.  Strategically, for UNE, collaboration and connectedness to other researchers, sources of data, technologies in support of research and the like are critical.  Developing our eResearch capabilities will greatly enhance this collaboration and connectness, potentially on a global scale.  You might well ask what is eResearch?  There are technical answers to this question.  For example, eResearch encompasses the following as pathways for developing new capabilities and methodologies for research, knowledge building and, potentially, knowledge transfer:

• Platforms, tools, technologies and services for collaboration and network connectivity, including rich media technologies;
• High performance computing (e.g., for intensive modelling and simulation work, high resolution/high speed graphical, statistical and spatial information work);
• Technologies and services for research data management, data sharing, storage and security, with appropriate controls on data and platform access and use.

However, perhaps a better question is what does eResearch mean for UNE?  We need a more coherent and strategic approach to UNE-relevant developments in all three areas listed above.  Our focus would not just be on the hard sciences, but also in the humanities, arts and social and health sciences.  We already have a number of researchers around UNE who are working in or with eResearch technologies; we need to share their stories with the UNE community as a first step toward achieving a more coherent strategic approach.

 Furthermore, because of our unique regional context and non-metrocentric mindset, I can see opportunities for us to explore eResearch in the context of collaboration and connectivity with communities, industries, professions and the like.  Thus, it is not just collaboration and connectivity between researchers that could be facilitated by eResearch capability but also linking research into broader social, cultural and business contexts using eResearch capability.  In short, I think eResearch could be a pathway to enhanced research impact.

As we move toward creating our eResearch agenda for UNE, we won’t be going it alone.  Last Friday, UNE Council gave approval for UNE to join INTERSECT as a subscribing institutional member for a 3 year period.  INTERSECT is the peak eResearch organisation in NSW, involving a collaboration of now seven (including UNE) NSW Universities.  By joining, UNE gains access to an on-campus eResearch Analyst who will work with UNE staff to develop eResearch projects and capabilities that make sense for us strategically and which draw upon the power of the collaborative network that INTERSECT brings together.  This can include gaining access to federal money set aside for specific types of eResearch capability development within the government’s Superscience infrastructure budget allocation.

We have already reaped some benefit from our budding relationship with INTERSECT in UNE’s participation (along with three other universities: Sydney, UNSW and Newcastle) in the recent eResearch survey, conducted jointly by INTERSECT and the University of Sydney.  The survey has now closed and we are beginning to build the story contained in the results; a story we will share with the UNE community as soon as we have it in a digestible form.  What the survey will help us do is identify areas and types of eResearch activity already evident at UNE as well as needs and opportunities for developing new capabilities.  This will provide another source of information for developing our institutional eResearch agenda.  One thing we do know is that UNE’s participation in the survey was excellent - we had 111 respondents (18.5% of all respondents), which proportionally represented the highest ratio of number of respondents to number of academic staff across the four universities.  There is clearly a voice to be heard about eResearch at UNE.

I recently had the occasion to attend the UNE Foundation’s Scholarships presentation where over $2.7m in scholarships were awarded to 85 undergraduates and 77 post graduates on 12 May.

I noted on the list of scholarship donors, a name I thought I recognized from a former life.  My knowledge of the donor’s particular personal circumstances was that they were a significant potential contributor to the University.  More importantly, they had already been contributing to scholarships for a few years to the University.

In the end, I was most pleased to confirm on the night that the actual donor was the person I thought it was and I was able to make their re-acquaintance.

We have since swapped ideas and this particular person is keen to make a practical and more material contribution to the University in the indigenous area, but is in no way interested in ethereal, or broadly “academic” pursuits such as more research or enquiry on the topic.  The challenge for us then, is to take the topic and bend it meaningfully towards what the University needs (in this particular case, underwriting a social inclusion, community engagement and national agenda worth over $13million in revenue to UNE by 2012) and what the donor is prepared to consider.

Supporting this and intentionally nurturing these types of outcomes, is the core business of the Office of Advancement and will be best achieved with the collaboration of the Faculties, Schools and administrative areas of the University.

My personal example above illustrates the exciting opportunities and the richness of the tapestry for growing the UNE which surrounds us.  I never cease to be impressed by our alumni and the community:  their passion for the University and their ongoing commitment in spirit and material generosity. 

To keep nurturing our alumni and interested parties to support the UNE’s core interests in research and teaching, the Office of Advancement is increasing its reach and focus. 

The unit is directed by Ms. Martha Saw, who is also seconded in part as CEO of the UNE Foundation, chaired by alumnus Dr. Geoff Fox.  Importantly, this brings the operational and philanthropic strategy seamlessly together.

The Office of Advancement is responsible for leading and coordinating activities and services associated with alumni, supporters, donors (current and prospective), and the wider community to the University.  This is achieved by raising awareness of the university amongst alumni, providing services and benefits to alumni, fundraising, administration of donations, maintaining, enhancing and nurturing relationships with supporters and donors.

To achieve this, the Unit has, or is:

• Preparing a prospectus for giving to the UNE and has, with academic, general staff and the Vice Chancellor’s Committee involvement identified a short-list of major priorities that donors (Alumni, individual donors, trusts, foundations, government and corporates) may wish to contribute to
• Created a new medium for communication with alumni - the First edition of “In Addition” posted out to over 51,000 addresses. To date (11.6.09), this annual appeal has attracted 225 donations for a total of $33,368.00. The majority of these gifts have been dedicated to Country Scholarships ($21,529.50).
• Conducting annual appeals - The medical school, the focus of the appeal, has attracted 28 donations totalling $2238.50. Dixson library has attracted 40 donations totalling $4185.50.
• Expanding the skill-base. Joining the team Relationship Officer Ms. Norma Abey, Alumni Relations Officer Ms. Jennifer Miller and Administration Officer Ms Janette Morgan, an Advancement Services Officer will be commencing in mid July and will be responsible for developing policies, publications and segmented/targeted events for Alumni, Donors and the UNE Foundation.

As the University is focussing more on non-government support, the Office of Advancement intends to become the hub for the University in ensuring fundraising occurs in a systematic, efficient and effective manner and to support schools and faculties in reaching their fundraising goals.  For instance, centrally coordinating approaches for grants or philanthropic activity - which currently does not happen - will avoid the embarrassment of one arm of the University approaching a prospective donor when they’ve already been approached by another ‘arm’!

For more information about Advancement, please contact Martha on 6773 2365.